Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes but it’s much broader. Just in general the lack of Steve Jobs noticing these glaring issues and coming down hard to solve them is pretty clear. I remember when macbooks briefly came out with a ridiculously bright standby led that required Black electrical tape over if you wanted to sleep with it in the house. Shortly after no more status leds on any MacBook (thank you!). Nowadays i find non stop little annoyances…
That light was really helpful to do the occasional late night visit to the bathroom in a home where I lived where there were no light controls at the bedside.
A spellchecker used to be a major feat of software engineering (2008)
181–190 of 210 posts
Re: A spellchecker used to be a major feat of software engineering (2008)
#182Is there a reason why Apple's iPhone spellcheck is often really poor, significantly worse than both LLMs and just...human eyes? I often find myself butchering the spelling of a word in a way where the correct answer is obvious to human eyes (probably because of "typoglycemia" [1]) and an AI LLM immediately understands what I meant to say, but Apple's spellcheck has "No Guesses Found." Does anyone else have this exper…
I have definitely noticed this too. I also use the built in swipe to type feature, and it may as well be a coin flip as to whether it gets the word right. I get that swiping is vague, but even a little bit of frequency prediction would tell you that “sounds good” is going to be more likely than “sings hood”. It’s an absolutely infuriating feature.
This drives me insane.
I use the swipe feature because I guess I have wide fingertips and frequently hit unintended, adjacent keys when pecking on the keyboard (especially as I’ve gotten older). The words produced by swiping often make no grammatical sense, and are frequently esoteric words that I just can’t believe rank high enough on a basic frequency list to suggest. Not to mention my own vocabulary, which apparently is not considered by the keyboard at all.
I had a way better experience using SwiftKey on my android phone 15 years ago.
Re: A spellchecker used to be a major feat of software engineering (2008)
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
Completely agree. I was given a small electric fan. It’s great in that it’s portable and I can use it in some of the crummy hotels I have to stay in. Unfortunately, it has a bright blue LED on it so it’s a pain to use at night when you’re trying to sleep. It’s so bright that even covered with tape it still shines through the thin plastic of the fan body. What really gets me is why they bothered putting an operating l…
Can't you improve this product with a screwdriver (to open it up) and wire-snipper (to cut off the LED)?
Oh yeah, it's definitely solvable if you can be bothered with it.
It was more just the observation that an unnecessary light had been included that degrades the performance of the product.
I find it intriguing how that comes to be. On paper it seems like adding the light wouldn't hurt the product even if not useful but no body actually used it it seems.
Re: A spellchecker used to be a major feat of software engineering (2008)
#184Is there a reason why Apple's iPhone spellcheck is often really poor, significantly worse than both LLMs and just...human eyes? I often find myself butchering the spelling of a word in a way where the correct answer is obvious to human eyes (probably because of "typoglycemia" [1]) and an AI LLM immediately understands what I meant to say, but Apple's spellcheck has "No Guesses Found." Does anyone else have this exper…
Yes but it’s much broader. Just in general the lack of Steve Jobs noticing these glaring issues and coming down hard to solve them is pretty clear. I remember when macbooks briefly came out with a ridiculously bright standby led that required Black electrical tape over if you wanted to sleep with it in the house. Shortly after no more status leds on any MacBook (thank you!). Nowadays i find non stop little annoyances…
> I remember when macbooks briefly came out with a ridiculously bright standby led that required Black electrical tape over if you wanted to sleep with it in the house. Shortly after no more status leds on any MacBook (thank you!).
The lack of status LEDs is actually the only thing I really REALLY hate about MacBooks!
Too often I have been bitten by the thing not properly going to sleep because SOMETHING keeps a wake lock (and of course macOS doesn't indicate this anywhere outside of Energy Monitor, nested in System Activity) and overheating in my bag as a result. A simple LED would have been a good visual indicator that it is still awake.
Re: A spellchecker used to be a major feat of software engineering (2008)
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
What founders / CEOs can you name described by those qualities?
I'm not sure you need to restrict yourself to these. You can also look at eg political leaders. Lee Kuan Yew is one example that comes to mind immediately. Warren Buffett might be a good example from the world of business. (Your favourite search engine or chatbot is probably more than happy to give you a steady stream of other examples.)
I don't know, maybe he wouldn't raise his voice, but I can't imagine it would be fun to be a subordinate of LKY at the moment he decided you were wasting his time.
Re: A spellchecker used to be a major feat of software engineering (2008)
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Not necessarily. There's plenty of people described as 'quiet and polite, but firm' or some similar variations.
What founders / CEOs can you name described by those qualities?
Digital's Ken Olsen is probably one of the most relevant examples. Though it probably helped that Olsen was largely working with the grain at DEC, building digital playsets which engineers themselves loved, rather than constantly forcing them to adopt a non-technical consumer's perspective.
Re: A spellchecker used to be a major feat of software engineering (2008)
#187Re: A spellchecker used to be a major feat of software engineering (2008)
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have to agree with that as a lead. Most developers claim to be done with a task without taking care of the small details that users will immediately notice. It’s a constant struggle to try to get them to care about what is actually the value of the feature they are implementing, let alone chase on their own initiative the small issues unless painfully listed in some requirements document.
As a dev Im always noticing these little problems in my designs but my boss just wants the thing done asap without worrying too much about it being nice to use.
It is the bottom and the top that appreciates the quality
the middle appreciate metrics and deliverables
Re: A spellchecker used to be a major feat of software engineering (2008)
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bit off-topic - macOS has excellent built-in dictionary. Just select the word in any app, press Ctrl+Command+D and it opens it. It even guesses most incorrect words correctly. Also translation available if it exist for current keyboard locales. E.g. > No entries for "typoglycemia", did you mean "hypoglycemia"?
There's also a gesture. Triple three finger tap or some such like.
I think it is actually hard press with single finger.
Re: A spellchecker used to be a major feat of software engineering (2008)
#190Is there a reason why Apple's iPhone spellcheck is often really poor, significantly worse than both LLMs and just...human eyes? I often find myself butchering the spelling of a word in a way where the correct answer is obvious to human eyes (probably because of "typoglycemia" [1]) and an AI LLM immediately understands what I meant to say, but Apple's spellcheck has "No Guesses Found." Does anyone else have this exper…
Yes but it’s much broader. Just in general the lack of Steve Jobs noticing these glaring issues and coming down hard to solve them is pretty clear. I remember when macbooks briefly came out with a ridiculously bright standby led that required Black electrical tape over if you wanted to sleep with it in the house. Shortly after no more status leds on any MacBook (thank you!). Nowadays i find non stop little annoyances…
There has to be something going on with iOS Safari and the keyboard because my typing goes to complete shit in ways it never does in any other application.
Here are some random examples I thought of for this comment. Notice how everything is spelled wrong as though the screen input doesn’t match the location of the buttons.
- tomoroww eather in united.kingdom
- lookip exhange rate
- devopper news
- download twotter.video